


remember us not as lost violent souls

by alcor



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake - Fandom
Genre: Altered Mental States, Anal Sex, Dissociation, M/M, Oral Sex, Size Difference, implied past barret/dyne, implied past cloud/zack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:33:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23833918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcor/pseuds/alcor
Summary: Two very sarcastic men, and a one-night stand. "So does the gun come off during sex, or…?"
Relationships: Cloud Strife/Barret Wallace
Comments: 35
Kudos: 355





	remember us not as lost violent souls

**Author's Note:**

> /REMAKE CONTINUITY, CRISIS CORE IMPLICATIONS/
> 
> uhhh au where reactor 5 goes off smoothly bc im not fucking around with timing this lol

"So does the gun come off during sex, or…?" 

"If you behave," Barret snorts, unlacing his boots one-handed with dexterous fingers. He notes Cloud watching him, an edge of rare curiosity in the merc's eyes. "Why, you want it somewhere specific?"

"I'd prefer we follow firearm safety protocol," Cloud quips, earning a short bark of laughter from Barret. In response, Barret releases a few clasps on his prosthetic, thumbs the nerve switch (his whole arm twitches once, as the connections between his nervous system and the machine disengage), and he pulls the gun away and sets it next to the bed. 

"That ain't the only heat I'm packing," Barret jokes, as he sits down on the bed, the mattress creaking with his weight, and undoes his belt. Cloud rolls his eyes (as though his one-liners are any better). "You got any experience handling heavy weaponry?"

For a moment, Cloud hesitates—"That's none of your business," he declares, with abrupt firmness. "We're just blowing off steam, isn't that what you said?"

"Well, sure," Barret drawls, "but I just like to know how much steam a man's blown before."

"Well, what about you?" The twilight in the window has shifted since they first entered Cloud's tiny apartment, and strikes his eyes at an angle that they almost seem to glow, a faint blue bioluminescence. Tifa is working a late shift at Seventh Heaven, and the possibility of her returning early and hearing is enough to lend their tryst an exciting edge of urgency. "Get around much?"

Barret thinks of mountain air and the scent of pine, dirt under his fingernails and Dyne's right hand in his own. "You know, you're right. It ain't any of our business." 

* * *

At some point during the short yet tumultuous course of their professional relationship, Barret's banter had turned from friendly aggression to aggressive friendliness, and Cloud had caught him looking in his direction approvingly a few times, only because Cloud had been looking in his direction a few too _many_ times. It was not really that they had decided to alter the terms of the arrangement (AVALANCHE's consistent cash flow problems aside), or that something had changed in how they felt about each other, or anything like that. It was more, well. There was something business-like about it. Barret seemed interested in something Cloud had. Cloud, well. Cloud went along to get along. 

Or something like that. To be honest, he isn't sure how he got here, inviting Barret to his place to see what might happen. It seems like an alien impulse. But hey, it had to be better than clinically working off his morning wood into the toilet after the sun rose, or feeling a vague aching in his chest and further down his spine once in a while if he let Tifa pour him too many whiskeys. And definitely better Barret than Jessie. Not that she wasn't _nice_. But she was… a lot. 

Cloud kneels down in front of Barret sitting on the bed, bites the side of his glove and pulls his hand out, and reaches for Barret's belt. Barret's left hand intercepts him, dwarfing Cloud's as he guides it under the belt, shifting on the bed to slide his pants past his ass. "Eager little Stamp," he purrs, cupping Cloud's hand around his balls, or as far around as it goes. "Getting exci—"

"Barret, you can talk as dirty as you want as long as you don't make it about the dog," Cloud says, as quickly as he can, before pulling down the other flap of Barret's jeans to expose his cock. Even at half-mast, it's definitely the biggest dick Cloud's ever seen _(not that he's…. seen many?)_ , which is to say, proportional to the man it belongs to. He licks his free hand and goes to work massaging Barret's shaft, which is warm and stiffening as he works his balls with the other hand. 

Barret grunts and cups the back of Cloud's head, pulling him closer to the massive tip of his cock. _Who's eager now?_ Cloud thinks, before panting in a deep breath and beginning to lick the head, getting a sense of how much of it he might be able to fit in his mouth. "Careful, SOLDIER boy," Barret breathes, his fingers stroking Cloud's scalp, mussing his hair. The touch gives Cloud a little frisson of his own, down his back and into his gut. "I'm a patient man. Don't bite off more than you can handle."

 _Well, sure,_ Cloud thinks, _Barret's big but he doesn't have to act like he's_ that _big_. Another deep breath, a slide of his tongue down along the thick vein, like a guiding track, and Cloud sucks Barret into his mouth. The head of his cock hits the back of Cloud's throat after maybe three inches. There are... more than a few inches left. Curling his lips, being careful of his teeth, Cloud slides back up to fondle Barret's head with his tongue, working it around and around, his tongue swirling in large motions. 

Barret's hand tightens in Cloud's hair, perhaps involuntarily. "Oh my _god_ ," he mutters, not even in a joking tone, "you _have_ done this before." Cloud's not sure what he means by that—after all, he thinks, it's kind of obvious what to do with a penis, especially if you're already familiar with the organ—but the implicit compliment is nice. Just to prove he can, he breathes again and pulls Barret's cock into his mouth deeper, this time maybe another half inch more than he managed at first. Breathing deeply through his nose, he suppresses his gag reflex and swallows spit around it. Barret hisses through his teeth. 

Something about the sensation feels _(familiar. A hand cupping his cheek to support him, rubbing the hinge of his jaw so he can open wider, in gentle circles. He knows he can open his throat by stretching his tongue a little further and)_ he does, moaning slightly to ease it in. "Ohh, that's right," Barret breathes, shifting forward and pushing further into Cloud's mouth. Cloud's vision grays for almost a second, his scalp prickling beneath Barret's fingertips, before he takes another long deep breath through his nose and grasps Barret's hip with his left hand, stabilizing himself. Focusing on Barret means not focusing on himself, and Cloud is fine with that. The headaches have been getting worse at night lately. But like this, he has enough to think about.

He hopes Barret doesn't thrust like that again too soon, or he really will choke. Saliva pools down the remaining length (shrinking as Cloud works Barret's dick into his throat), moistening his right hand, wrapped around the base of his shaft, which he begins to work, using the spit as makeshift lube. "That's right," Barret murmurs, "take it, SOLDIER boy, take it _all_ the way down," and his encouragement blurs into the background as Cloud gets into a rhythm. He... he likes this? He likes this. Something especially about Barret's praise burns warm in his chest. Which is weird. He never cares any other time.

Cloud backs off, sliding his mouth up Barret's cock and breathing hot moist air over the tip, his tongue gliding up, before sliding back down onto it, his eyes closing, sucking it almost to the hilt. Barret gasps, "Damn!..." and his hand tightens in Cloud's hair again. Cloud welcomes the _(slight tug that stops short of pain, and he leans in, determined to give everything he's got.)_

* * *

Barret had not had the highest expectations for this encounter, but there was no denying that the merc was nice to look at, possibly the _prettiest_ of boys, and Barret was not worried about destroying an important friendship with the young man the way he might worry about the complication of dalliances with literally anyone else from Sector 7. However, it turns out that Cloud is very good at sucking dick. Almost too good. _Suspiciously_ good—Cloud does some complicated thing with his tongue that brings Barret _very_ close, and he swears between his teeth, gripping Cloud's hair even tighter before guiltily relaxing his grip—and Barret darkly wonders if the man had ever sold his sword in a _different_ way, in the dark past he never talks about. 

But he never asked for money, only seemed to sense that Barret was indulging an atrociously lewd mental image after a couple drinks at Seventh Heaven (he might have been ass-assessing while Cloud and Wedge played darts), and challenged Barret, when they had a moment alone at their table, to say what he'd been thinking. And Barret, perhaps unwisely, shot his mouth off, and Cloud had asked in that straightforward way of his, "Are you flirting with me?" and Barret had countered, "That depends," and Cloud had said, "On what?" and Barret had said, "On if you're into it," and Cloud had said, "What happens if I am?" and, well.

And now here's Barret, about to melt like taffy in Cloud's mouth. The situation is getting hotter much faster than he expected, and it's unnerving. He needs to take the momentum back. Barret tugs on Cloud's hair a couple of times, and pulls him gently away. (Man, though, his balls are _aching_ .) Cloud lets him go almost unwillingly, like he was about to set a record, and coughs when Barret's dick is completely free. There is a long streamer of drool hanging from the corner of his lips, and Cloud hastily wipes it away with the back of his wrist, his cheeks burning pink. Damn, the boy is _cute_. Barret had never thought of himself as a guy into twinks, but there's a first time for everything. 

"Let's slow down a bit," he says, running his first knuckle under Cloud's chin and tilting it up. Cloud's eyes flick once in the direction of the door—"We don't have to be in a hurry," Barret reiterates. "Let's have some real fun." He grabs the hem of his shirt (the jacket had come off when they walked in) and pulls it up and off, shrugging his shorter arm free; once done, he reaches down and tugs on Cloud's shirt, too. "Come on, let's see what you got."

Cloud hesitates, before reaching over his head and gripping the back of his sleeveless shirt, pulling it over his head and leaving his artfully spiked hair even spikier with the friction. It was no secret that Cloud's arms were quite ripped for his size, so Barret knew the man wouldn't be skinny, but he wasn't prepared for the scars. One particularly striking one, a dark, knotty gash, sticks out over the left side of his chest—like he'd taken a sword directly below the heart. (What a wound to survive. Any lingering doubts Barret might have had, not that there were many after Reactor 5, about Cloud's history in SOLDIER were knocked right out.) 

Cloud tracks Barret's gaze and he curls his shoulder in slightly, as he moves to suddenly stand up. "Maybe I—" he begins to say, but Barret snatches him around the lower back and pulls him backwards onto the bed, on top of him. "—Whoa!" Up close, Barret can see the faintly phosphorescent ring of mako-green around Cloud's pupils, and how it blends into the bright blue of the rest of his eyes. His eyelashes are blond, too, and he even has a few very delicate freckles splashed across his cheekbones. 

"Ya cute, merc," Barret says, grinning. "Make some girl real happy some day. Or some guy." He clasps a handful of Cloud's ass, still in his jeans. _Rock_ hard with muscle. 

"I'm not cute," Cloud mutters, in a magnificent display of un-self-awareness, but that pink is still burning high in his cheeks, and he puts a hand on Barret's chest. "What are you thinking next?" 

In answer, Barret curls his arm around Cloud again, and rolls over. "You know I didn't finish," he growls playfully into Cloud's ear, bearing Cloud face-first into the mattress. The bed creaks with their weight.

"Well, whose fault was that…?" Cloud grumbles. 

"You down? Or is that too far for tonight?" Barret wouldn't mind letting Cloud finish sucking him off, or even reciprocating. But it's fun teasing the young merc, riling him up. He gets competitive about the _strangest_ things.

He slowly flexes his arms, as though doing a pushup, into the mattress. Barret feels himself being lifted up on Cloud's back. When he reaches the full extension of his arms, he looks over his shoulder. "I can take your dick, Barret," he says.

"Well, okay then, I'll take that as an enthusiastic 'yes,'" Barret says. He leans forward and undoes Cloud's belt while Cloud still has them both pushed up off the mattress, and then sits back onto his heels and pulls Cloud's pants down. As Cloud kicks them off, Barret eyes up his legs, as wiry and sculpted as the rest of him. "You got lube?"

A pause. "Uh," Cloud says.

"Are you serious?" Barret grumbles, reaching down and grabbing his pants off the floor. "Never mind, I got backup in here." He rummages in one of the many pockets. "Like I got the patience to dry-hump your skinny ass."

"You carry it with you?"

Barret grins. "The silicone stuff keeps the ballistics greased in a pinch."

"Huh. Interesting…" Cloud settles back into the mattress, while Barret dexterously works the screw-on cap open one-handed and drizzles it onto his member. "I never realized how much you…" He trails off like he realizes he shouldn't finish the sentence, but then presses on, committed, "have to do with your left hand."

"Hard to remember I have a life outside'a liberating the planet, huh?" Barret quips, slathering up and making sure the lube is well-distributed. He takes care to sneer a bit so Cloud can't hear it if his voice accidentally shows a little bit too much. He hasn't had a lot of normal since Corel. "Well, I lost out on a career as a piano player, so here I am."

"You could shoot the keys," Cloud says, but he says it like an apology, rueful, muffling his face in the pillow.

"Shut your mouth, merc," Barret says, "and help me get in."

* * *

As much as Barret can do one-handed, maneuvering his cock into Cloud's ass without falling onto him from the mattress shifting beneath their weight would be a large ask. Barret stabilizes himself by grasping Cloud's shoulder. Cloud, meanwhile, winds up reaching behind himself with both hands and spreading, while his face and shoulders press into the pillow. 

It's a somewhat humiliating position, but calling the whole thing off just because of slight logistical problems would be even more humiliating, and also probably insulting. Cloud resolves not to think of how he must look from the outside. Barret's hand is warm, and his thumb rubs the back of Cloud's neck a little before he makes a move. Despite himself, Cloud shivers. With his pants and shirt all off, it's a little cold in here. 

"Deep breath, merc," Barret says. Cloud inhales, _(and goes to hold it. Hands stroke his cheek from behind: Don't hold it,_ he _says. Breathe out with it. You'll relax.)_ Barret's massive, hard cock presses against Cloud's entrance, and he _(fights the urge to clench up, his toes squirming in the sheets, his breathing hitching, becoming erratic. Shh. Don't panic. It's not a race,_ he _says, as he presses with)_ gentle urgency, his knees framing Cloud's own digging into the mattress beneath them, groaning with their weight. The uncomf _(ortable sensation of pressure, pain, is giving way to an oddly satisfying sensation of stretching, fullness - the lube helps - and Cloud makes a sound he's never made before, and_ his _hands brush his hair back again and he asks, Is that good? and)_ he's got one arm back under him now, fist clenched, as he breathes and gasps, 

"Ah—ahn—"

but it's still good, it's going in, and _(the sensation is really unlike anything Cloud has felt before, his hand clenches in the sheets and he gasps oh god it's so big, and_ he _laughs and says, well that's ni)_ "Heh, no shit," and Cloud blinks, his next breath suddenly cold in his lungs. His head is hurting again, buzzing, like it did in that _(alley in sector 8, from_ **[the mako fumes]** _)_ , like it's somehow overfull. "Hey, you okay?" Barret squeezes Cloud's shoulder once, asking for confirmation to keep going.

Cloud takes in another shaky breath. He's so sick of these headaches, these moments of sudden hyperreal lucidity so strong it feels broken. He just wanted something to distract him for a few hours. He just wanted to feel _normal_ for longer than half a day at a time. "Barret," he says, "do me a favor and fuck my brains out, okay?"

* * *

You know, they say never to stick it in crazy, but as far as Barret was concerned, _everyone_ was a little crazy. Still, he saw it - that moment when they were prepping, as Cloud's cat-sharp eyes went fuzzy, when his breathing changed and something cleared in him, and those soft moans came out of him like ghosts. He went somewhere else like that when he was blowing Barret, too, some sense-memory unhitching him from the room. Barret's seen that before. You see it in soldiers. Hell, apparently you even see it in SOLDIERs. There's always a piece of them stuck somewhere in time, bad or good, split up like wood, where all the breaks still join. 

Still, when a comrade in arms asks you to fuck his brains out, what is there to do but oblige? And Cloud definitely seemed all here when he asked it. He doesn't _want_ to be in this room, in the Sector 7 slums. So Barret, now that he's good and tucked in, and pretty sure he isn't about to split Cloud open stem to stern, settles his weight down, on his left hand and the end of his right arm, below his elbow, and thrusts.

One or two, and Cloud is still gripping the sheets, his feet flexing, breathing as controlled as he can, taking Barret with as much composure as he can. Barret can feel his warm, tight ass clenching and releasing around him, in a situation where another man might have needed twenty minutes of prepping. Must be that mako. But on thrust four or five (and Barret is starting to speed up, because he needs it and it feels really good), Cloud suddenly relaxes, goes really loose in all his muscles, and begins moving with Barret, taking it as deep as he can, his breathing evening out to a soft rhythm.

And he starts _talking_. 

"I'm sorry," he murmurs into the pillow, his breath hitching as Barret moves in him, "it's m-my first time…" and then, turning, answering himself, "That's fine, means y—ah!—you haven't got any bad h-habits yet," and then again, "Let me know wha—hah—what I should do…" and - you know, this feels somehow dirty, like eavesdropping, and Barret decides to focus on his rhythm. He's not far from climax, and he keeps thrusting in, trying to get Cloud to moan again, to make those little sounds, and—

"I'm g-gonna," Cloud groans, "I c-can't, ah," and one of his hands reaches down to grab his own dick, which has been rubbing against the mattress as they rutted together, and is now throbbing hard on its own, purplish compared to Cloud's pale complexion, and the tip has emerged slick and dark, and Barret can't stand it anymore, between his tight, wet ass and the raw, animal need that's cracked out of him and the softness of his breath, and he's come inside him before he even has a chance to warn the man, groaning aloud as his load splashes back on him and spills between their thighs, sticking to their skin. Barret eases out, sitting back on the back half of the mattress and letting out a huge breath. He'd worked up a sweat. 

Cloud sinks forward into the pillow, still stroking himself. He's curled up into himself now, facing the window, the now-night-sky faint with artificial light. "Ah," he gasps, not a long drawn-out moan but a short, almost surprised breath, and his own seed leaks between his fingers, soaking into the sheets. He lies there, eyelashes fluttering, curled up and breathing, for a long minute, and Barret feels strangely overwhelmed at how vulnerable he suddenly appears. That big scar on his chest is just barely visible under the curve of his ribs, and Barret suddenly has to turn away, heaving himself off the bed and over to the sink, where he splashes his face, washes his hand, grabs a towel and sponges his crotch and legs off. It's gotten late, unexpectedly.

"Damn mess to clean up," he mutters, sitting back down on the edge of the bed to replace his clothes, one article at a time. Cloud doesn't move. He glances over at him. Still achingly pretty and tragic in the light pollution from the window. "You know, I'm not cuddling," Barret says. Defensive. "I gotta wash up and put Marlene to bed." Just after sunlamp-set was still just before her bedtime, but Wedge couldn't watch her all night. 

"Didn't ask you to," Cloud says, and Barret almost breathes a sigh of relief. He sounds more like regular grouchy Cloud. Barret was almost afraid he'd somehow busted him. Serves him right for sticking it in crazy. Still, though...

Barret retrieves his gun prosthetic from the corner near the bed and, after checking to see no rogue contaminants had gotten on it, twisted and ratcheted it back into place on his arm. "Five gil for the extra laundry," he says, flicking a coin onto the table in the corner.

"Mighty nice of you," Cloud quips. He's still lying on the heavily mussed (and now distinctly sunken) bed.

Barret stomps toward the door, then turns back. "What, you're not gonna lie in that all night, right?"

"I _have_ a shower," Cloud says. Barret gets the sense that he might have stirred before Barret had said anything, and was now lying still to be an asshole. "Unless you forgot you wrecked my ass ten minutes ago."

"If you can't walk tomorrow, it's your own goddamn fault," Barret says, pointing an accusing finger at him.

"Good _night_ , Barret," Cloud says. Barret can now see a very faint smirk playing around his lips. He huffs, and slams the door.


End file.
